Hanging re-enactment in Walton County

(Mods: feel free to move this to whatever forum is appropriate. Or not.)

I saw on WSB today (Noon or evening news) a report about the KKK hanging of two black couples in Walton Co. some 60 years ago. Some people are, and have the past couple of years, re-enacting the hanging to try to flush out the perpetrators. The FBI has reopened the case.

This I think is a Good Thing.

What bothers me is that in the news story it was mentioned that the GBI was doing gun checks to make sure the firearms carried were unloaded and safe. And I saw in the film someone who had a revolver, that was very real looking, stuffed down the back of his pants (sort of Mexican carry)

Now my question is: WHAT THE "F" IS THE GBI DOING FACILITATING WEAPONS AT A WHAT IS OBVIOUSLY A 'PUBLIC GATHERING'???

Is the GBI in the business of deciding what laws are OK to violate and help out if they think its a Good Thing?

Who cares that in this particular case law enforcement is looking the other way while the "public gatherings" clause is technically violated? It's not being violated in spirit, because the "guns" (if they are actual deadly weapons and not props or replicas) are only being used as props, and they have been checked and certified to be unloaded, so nobody is in any danger. This is not the kind of situation the legislature INTENDED the law to apply to.

People violate the "public gatherings" law all the time. It's hard not to, because the law is both vague and overbroad. Why are you worried about it? White men have been vioating this law for decades in Georgia by having gun shows. There is no exception in the Code for gun shows-- only official shooting matches, and then only for bona fide competitors.
Are you upset that some African-American civil rights activists are getting the same indulgences that we gun enthusiasts have gotten for years?

And what is so interesting about photo #8 anyway? The subject of the photo is the bloody bodies of the four lynch mob victims. Off the the side we can see the barrel of a gun. It looks to me like a rifle or shotgun that has had the barrel sawed off a few inches shorter than factory standard, but a few inches longer than the law requires. What's the big deal? It is likely that some memers of the real lynch mob from 50 years ago were in fact carrying sawed-off or otherwise home-modified weapons.

Actually, I would suggest that there is no violation, even a technical one. The public gathering law has an allowance for notifying LEO/security of the weapon and following directions. If GBI is performing the LEO/security task, everything's kosher.

The same goes for many gun shows, where LEOs tie-wrap or otherwise inspect weapons at the door. Plus, despite the name ("show"), aren't gun shows more like temporary shopping malls than shows? And the AG has told us that shopping malls are not public gatherings.

Well there is a new, recent change in our law that now allows citizens who happen to find themselves in a public gathering to turn their weapon over to a cop or security officer and follow his or her instructions. That wasn't the law for most of the last 40 years, and yet gun shows were held then, and nobody complained or questioned why.

I've never been to a Gun Show/Mall that didn't charge an admission fee. Given that movies are not public gatherings because a fee is charged and thus the event is not open to the public so a Gun Show/Mall should fall under the same context. The one area where you could run into trouble would be if the Gun Show/Mall is held in a publicly owned building like say the Georgia National Fairgrounds in Perry....

USMCR, I see the "admission exception" to the public gathering law raised every now and then. I don't know where it came from, perhaps another state. But, I've researched it, and I have not been able to find any support for the notion that charging admission makes what otherwise would be a public gathering, not a public gathering.

I understand why somebody might come to that conclusion, thinking that charging admission makes it private, or something like that, but I have not found a case or AG opinion or any other authority in GA that supports it. If you know of any, I'd love to see it. Otherwise, I think this one falls in the urban myth category.

JRM, Are you aware of any case law where a GFL holder was charged and convicted for carry at a "public gathering" where admission was charged? That may give us an indication of the legality of carry at such a place... In my mind you could hardly call something "public" and then charge admission. Arn't the homeless/pennyless part of the public as well?

But the poor guy was not even an attendee, and he was only in the parking lot because the cop told him to wait there, and the basis for upholding the conviction was that a crowd had gathered when the police officer searched him and found a weapon, as crowds tend to do after a shooting.

The reality of case law in this state is that the public gathering cases involve unlicensed people in nefarious activities. A "crowd of people" or "bored teenagers congregating in a crowd" is sufficient for judges to let another charge stick to a very bad person.

The only public gathering case I know of where the defendant was licensed is State v. Burns (McDonalds case), and there the court bent over backwards to find no public gathering.

So, am I suggesting that those of us with licenses go around trying to get arrested in questionable places to make good case law?

Nope.

We need to get this thing repealed.

Not tinkered with.

Repealed.

What does your representative think about that?

If you don't know, shouldn't you ask?

No other state has a law quite like O.C.G.A. 16-11-127. We need better laws.

USMCR, MP is correct. The huge majority of public gathering cases are cases where someone without a GFL committed some other crime, was discovered to be carrying, and was charged with violating the public gathering law, too.

The reality is that GFL holders don't commit crimes. They don't get caught carrying at public gatherings because they don't get caught doing anything. So, very little case law (like MP says, just the Burns case) gets developed.

So, the defendants in the public gathering cases that do get reported are convicted of other things, too. They are not very sympathetic defendants, and bad facts make bad law.

That said, I am not aware of any cases where the charging of admission was put into play in deciding whether something was a public gathering or not.

Who cares that in this particular case law enforcement is looking the other way while the "public gatherings" clause is technically violated? It's not being violated in spirit, because the "guns" (if they are actual deadly weapons and not props or replicas) are only being used as props, and they have been checked and certified to be unloaded, so nobody is in any danger. This is not the kind of situation the legislature INTENDED the law to apply to.

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Very good explanation of why those four murders have gone unsolved and unprosecuted for over 40 years. Not to mention the many others since the late 1860's.

People violate the "public gatherings" law all the time. It's hard not to, because the law is both vague and overbroad. Why are you worried about it? White men have been vioating this law for decades in Georgia by having gun shows. There is no exception in the Code for gun shows-- only official shooting matches, and then only for bona fide competitors. Are you upset that some African-American civil rights activists are getting the same indulgences that we gun enthusiasts have gotten for years?

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Ain't it great when the race card gets played. (Hint: Reading comprehension is your friend.)

I'm concerned because I carry and I shop at Wal-Mart. I also have this very odd idea that the law should be aplied equally without regard to race or social position or the notoriety of the organizers of a public gathering.

Who mentioned gun shows? What indulgences? I have never carryied in a gun show. It's against the law to carry in a public building. Now if I could buy an Indulgence from 'Da Bishop'....

And what is so interesting about photo #8 anyway? The subject of the photo is the bloody bodies of the four lynch mob victims. Off the the side we can see the barrel of a gun. It looks to me like a rifle or shotgun that has had the barrel sawed off a few inches shorter than factory standard, but a few inches longer than the law requires. What's the big deal? It is likely that some memers of the real lynch mob from 50 years ago were in fact carrying sawed-off or otherwise home-modified weapons.

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The murders may have used guns that violated NFA34. (I doubt they did. Why mess up a good bird gun.) But they could only have done so because 'law enfocement' and the community 'looked the other way' knowing that Congress and the Legislature didn't INTEND for the law to be applied to Whites murdering Blacks who might rock the boat.

Very similar to the Judge in Florida in 1915 who held that a White man couldn't be guilty of carrying concealed since everyone knew that law only applied to Blacks.

I mention gun shows because most of them that I have been to have been held in publicly owned or operated buildings-- at county fairgrounds, usually. That's one way that they are can be a "public gathering" aside from the "shopping mall" type gathering of people to buy, sell, swap, and browse (in that respect, it is like a shopping mall, though the way it is organized and its hours of operation make it similar to an auction, too).

Aside from that, I don't see anything else in your post to respond to. White men have been carrying deadly weapons into certain publicly owned buildings for generations, with the cops' approval, under this gun show unwritten loophole. So now some black folks get the cops to look the other way under a similarly-unwritten photo prop loophole for their little project and somebody here at packing.org starts complaining that we ought to do a better job of enforcing our laws??? Pretty stupid and petty if you ask me.